


Metamorphosis

by oisiflaneur



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 05:27:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8698825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oisiflaneur/pseuds/oisiflaneur
Summary: You are not a romantic creature. It's simply not in your nature. But when you look at him, you begin to think you might understand how others can be. Ryuuji Kawara ellicits the same kind of helpless wonder that seeps through you when you think about the sun and all of its nuclear potential.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is like, a year late, and meant to repay scotty for buying me holistar and giving me access to all the beautiful gay hawk party backstory that i desperately wanted more of. this took so long because at first i didn't have enough ideas, and then i replayed and got TOO MANY FRICKIN IDEAS. so there's probably some more, slightly less pretentious stuff on the way, but have this for now, and merikuri!!!
> 
>  **content warnings** are spoilers for maingame, bad boy's love, and holistar. along with imagined medical abuse and torture, and... i guess pining. at some point i'll write these two as something remotely approaching healthy, but today is not that day.
> 
> my general writing tag is [here](http://oisiflaneur.tumblr.com/tagged/graywrites) for drabbles and news!

You are not a romantic creature, by any means.

There _is_ a poetry to science, you'll admit. From the dance of electrons around the nucleus, to the way that even unthinking creatures can take sunlight and turn it into energy, to the bittersweetness of natural selection. The determination to survive even on the lightless ocean floor, clustering in communities around a vent or a carcass. The everpresent certainty of gravity and its rules, drawing everything towards the planet at the same rate. The sheer variety of clouds that can be sculpted together or blasted apart by the winds.

There's a great deal of beauty and poetry in the world around you; but the poetry of words, you've never understood. After all, the majority of language is thefted from previous civilizations, and if they had anything worth saying, wouldn't they still be around?

So, no. You are not a romantic creature. It's simply not in your nature. But when you look at him, you begin to think you might understand how others can be. 

Ryuuji Kawara ellicits the same kind of helpless wonder that seeps through you when you think about the sun and all of its nuclear potential.

You want, deeply, to pinpoint why. You think that perhaps if you could dissect him, you could locate the source. You want to pick him apart little by little, to crack open his ribcage and curl around his heart to soak up the warmth.

But then, of course, you wouldn't be able to bask in it anymore. That would be killing the golden goose. You know that if you tried to contain him in a jar of formaldehyde, all that light and warmth would just leak out, dissipating without a continual source. 

So instead, you content yourself with observation, and file away all of the data you can. The way his eyes crinkle at the corners when he laughs, which is always genuine. The way he taps his fingers or twirls a pen between his knuckles when poring over a problem, seemingly without being aware of it. The way that once he starts yawning, he can't seem to stop, covering his mouth every few minutes and drooping over the desk. 

You wonder what his heartbeat sounds like. Would it speed up if you came closer? Would it be due to excitement, or fear? 

It's so, so difficult for you to determine which would be preferable.

Because, again, you don't want him _dead_. You know that his time on this earth -- and yours, if you don't get working on that serum -- is finite, but you can't imagine being the one to bring it to an end. You could never be the one to deprive your own self of his presence.

So, rather more accurately, imagining it is all that you _can_ do. 

At least he makes it easy. His lab safety is absolutely abysmal. While you painstakingly suffer through wearing your goggles over your glasses and changing your gloves between projects, he breezes between past the supply table when he comes in and doesn't even look at it for the rest of the day. Instead of running an experiment on his own to completion, he hops between stations to meddle with what others have progressed on. Including you.

It's infuriating, but at least it gives you plenty of scenarios to consider. _Particularly_ when he handles the acids without any protective gear.

And of course, there's always the pathogens that you all deal with. It would be so easy for a vial to slip between his fingers and smash at his feet; for the airbourne illnesses, of course. A more potent virus, you'd have to slip into his coffee, or inject him directly… Would he suspect the cause? Or would he still let you tend to him in his time of need? It would be so convenient to be _his_ doctor, hovering over his bed as he recovered, shooing everyone else away in the name of rest and relaxation.

It'd be the same for any extreme injury; maybe he'd regret his disregard for gloves if he ruined the skin on his hands with chemical burns, forcing him to rely on you for everything from work to feeding. Or if he leant too far over the bunsen burner, temporarily losing his vision. _Or_ if he slipped and fell, maybe smashing a beaker and getting glass shards embedded in his skin when he hits the floor.

There's just _so much_ that could happen to him in the lab.

You still aren't entirely certain about the source of these thoughts. They don't occur to you regarding anyone else in your life, and that's the major reason that they don't sit right with you. The _nature_ of the fantasies isn't bothersome: it's their novelty. No one else has ever inspired this level of emotion from you. Perhaps it's because you've spent your life in something like a fugue state, and anything that inspires _any_ kind of feeling would have this effect on you. Perhaps it's just the appeal of taking something beautiful; and completely, thoroughly _ruining_ it. 

You think that the idea is beautiful in its own right.

There are more than a few times when you've been startled from these thoughts by his hand clapping onto your shoulder, that wide grin filling your vision. _What's got you looking so thoughtful, Isa?_ he always asks innocently, and you turn and mumble something about irrational numbers. Because, strangely, that's how he makes you feel. Like something that has never properly existed before, and you need to classify it.

But still, you can never classify him. He exists outside the boundaries that you're used to, breaking rules at every turn and surprising you at every chance. He's like light, in so many ways: but for this particular metaphor, it's his existence as both a particle and a wave. He exists as both the friendly mentor leaning over your shoulder and brushing against you at every opportunity, but also as the untouchable superior in your workspace who has his own separate private life.

Because it seems that there are _some_ rules that he must abide by, that you know he would never break. There are some lines he would still never consider crossing. And one of them, you know, is that he won't do anything to hurt his young fiancee.

So you wait, and you watch, and you _think_. You occupy yourself with your imagination, and wait. You tell yourself that the stolen moments of private tenderness are enough to keep you afloat. You tell yourself that he'll leave her, eventually, and you will be the one waiting in the wings to comfort him. You wait, and wait, and wait.

You wait too long. Eventually, he leaves not just her, but all of you left still breathing. And eventually, your imagination is the only thing you're left with.


End file.
